Online Marketing (SEO & PPC) for small business

When we start up in business there are so many things to do that most of us write a list and work down it. Bank account, business cards, web site, letterhead etc all done so we can now sit back and get on with the business itself. Well, actually we can, but we shouldn’t. A web site is for many the visible presence of a business. A static web site is like a picture of a flower that you’ve stuck on your office wall, nice to look at but frozen, unchanging and unlikely to bring in much business.

Used properly, your web site can be more like a garden, interesting, forever changing and providing you with flowers and produce, or in business terms, clients and sales. This is where online marketing comes in, turning your web site into the driver for your business, attracting clients and generating revenue. So what questions do you need to ask when considering marketing online?

What can Online Marketing do for my business?
Just as every business has unique needs, there is no one size fits all solution for online or digital marketing. However, online marketing itself falls into a few main areas and it is worth considering what these are and how they could help your business so that you can have a rewarding discussion with the marketing specialist. Start by asking yourself the following questions:
• What is my core product and does my website mention it? This may seem like a strange question but there are web sites which spend pages talking about industry expertise, being market leaders and optimising the client experience but forget to say what the company actually does. This leads on to the second question:
• If I wanted to find a company which sold my product, what would I search for on the internet? Search engine optimisation (SEO) at its most basic will come up with the key words that searchers use and make sure that those words are both used within the text on your web site and also in the source code that runs behind your site. Incorporating those key words in your site means that when a potential client searches for your product, your site is more likely to come higher up the results list. Most clients give up after page 3 so you need to try and get as high in the search results as possible to attract more clients. However, the search engines don’t just work on key words, they look at other factors as well to decide how to rank results. These lead on to further SEO services questions:
• Am I a member of any organisations or industry bodies? If you are and the organisation keeps registers of members on line, the register will often include a web address. This links their site to yours. Search engines like links, particularly where they are relevant. On a note of caution, sometimes having 500 links is better than having 50,000 links. Too many and the search engines will back away.
• Do I belong to any chat forums? Again these will allow links back to your site and enhance your ranking.
• Do I have something to say? Websites which have some content that changes tend to be ranked higher than static ones. Incorporating a news article or blog on the site will help, as will posting articles on other sites with links back to your site.
• Does my product naturally fit with another product that I don’t sell? For example, continuing the gardening theme, you may sell gardening equipment but not cover garden ponds. You could set up a link on your site to another site which does sell pond equipment. If someone clicks the link from your site and then buys from the other site you will get a percentage of the sale. This is known as an affiliate scheme. Payment is generally based only on sales although there are some schemes where you will get a small fee from your affiliates whether a product is bought or not. When the client clicks from your site to the other one a cookie is created which records the client as coming from you. Cookies are only kept for a set period of time so while you may get a payment for a click within the last month, don’t expect it if the client takes a year to buy. Affiliate marketing schemes where clients click from your site to others bring money to you for no effort; those where clients click to your site from your marketing affiliate bring increased sales for the payment of a small percentage.
• Am I prepared to pay to encourage potential clients to look at my site? This is where another online advertising tool comes in. Pay per click (PPC) is a way of advertising your site in the search engines. You start by choosing the key words that you think potential clients may search on. When those words are searched your advert appears on the top or right hand side of the results page. If your advert is clicked the client is taken to your web site and you have to pay for that click. The amount you pay is set at the start and depends on a complex mix of the popularity of the key word and the search engine’s opinion of your site. However, PPC internet advertising is flexible as you can set a maximum budget per day and you know that the only people clicking on to your site are those who are already searching for your product.

What questions should I ask the online marketing agency when we speak?
Start by running through the areas that you have identified and check that the company can help you with these. In addition ask them:
• What areas do they specialise in? Some companies will concentrate on search engine marketing or PPC; others will offer a full online web marketing service. It is also worth checking what other services they offer. For example, some may offer full web design services and will be able to help with streamlining your web site to work faster or updating it to take full advantage of online marketing. Others may also offer other marketing or advertising services so that you finish up with a co-ordinated marketing campaign.
• How long will it take for a difference to be seen? In general beware of companies that promise a search engine ranking such as page one in Google after a day. Whilst your PPC advert can get there, the SEO improvements that you make can take some weeks to result in improved Google SEO and other search engine rankings. In fact, if you need to completely re-write your web site content, it effectively becomes a new search engine submission and it can actually go down in the ranking for a short period before the search engine crawlers pick it up and rank it higher.
• Can they give you examples of successful campaigns? The marketing company should be able to give you examples of increased ranking through SEO, or increased sales through PPC or SEO. Take the time to talk to the clients involved and check their experience with the company.
• What are their charges – see below
• Can they write content, articles and blogs? In the same way that being able to add two and two doesn’t make you an accountant, being able to put words on paper doesn’t make you a writer. Writing interesting and engaging articles and blogs for the web is an art form and unless you are lucky enough to have a natural SEO writer in your team it is better to outsource than to put potential clients off with stilted prose. Some online marketing companies can provide content whilst others will have links to specialist writers.

What will an online marketing company need from me?
The first thing that a SEO company will need is a full understanding of your business, products and client base. Whether the SEO consultant is looking at choosing search phrases for PPC and SEO, revamping your website content or setting up links with other sites it is important that these are targeted and relevant.

Online marketing works best when it is part of your overall marketing strategy. The online marketing specialist will therefore need regular meetings with your marketing and advertising team to ensure a co-ordinated strategy.

Finally, the online marketing company will need commitment and an understanding that SEO marketing is ongoing and ever changing. Yes, peppering your site with SEO keywords, adding a few links and writing a couple of articles will help in the short term. Unless you keep up with keyword trends, add fresh articles and forge new links your site will slip back into oblivion. Online marketing should therefore have a continuing presence in your ongoing marketing budget. Which leads us on to:-

Finally, what will online marketing cost?
Some website marketing companies will offer an initial free review of your web site. This can give you an idea of their initial recommendations and therefore of the costs. They will then either offer you a fixed price for the marketing work or charge on an hourly rate.

Whilst hourly rates may be as low as £25 per hour, in general expect them to be at least £50 per hour. We recommend that an hourly contract includes minimum work levels. For example, if you were paying someone to write a blog for you, an hourly rate gives the writer freedom to get carried away in researching the blog and you could end up paying for 3 hours research for a 300 word blog. A minimum work level agreement would allow you to cap the amount of time spent on the blog.

Fixed prices will generally vary depending on the amount of work needed. If you are appointing a company to undertake SEO, PPC and affiliate identification then try and get a breakdown between the various elements. Fixed “off the shelf” packages can cost as little as £250. In general the more you pay, the more work will be done to improve your ranking and sales.

Some companies also offer packages where you pay a set amount with a bonus if the web site reaches a pre-determined ranking level.

Pay per click rates vary from a few pence per click to hundreds of pounds. However, as you have complete control over your PPC budget, you only spend as much or as little as you can afford. Again PPC management is an ongoing process and your campaign should be reviewed regularly.